Social Studies

How can you make this week’s Super Bowl relevant to your curriculum? Whether debating football-related controversies,
making predictions, analyzing ads, writing descriptions, understanding data and statistics or learning about head trauma, we have ideas for using The Times and the Learning Network to do it.

Steve Almond poses this question in a 2014 piece for the Magazine. As he explains:

Recently…medical research has confirmed that football can cause catastrophic brain injury — not as a rare and unintended consequence, but as a routine byproduct of how the game is played. That puts
us fans in a morally queasy position. We not only tolerate this brutality. We sponsor it, just by watching at home. We’re the reason the N.F.L. will earn $5 billion in television revenue alone next year,
three times as much as its runner-up, Major League Baseball.

Problems have been stacking up this season on the NFL’s horizon like planes in a holding pattern: investigations, arbitrations, suspensions, lawsuits and plea deals that shamed both an owner and a high-profile
star.

It’s been a turbulent season so far by almost any measure — save for the most important one: Business has rarely been better.

Despite smoldering anger over Commissioner Roger Goodell’s bungling of the Ray Rice domestic-violence case,
as well as the way some teams responded when their players ran afoul of the law, no one has bailed on the NFL. The sponsors who raised very public concerns two months ago have slipped quietly back into the fold.
The politicians and women-rights advocates who expressed outrage have largely fallen silent. And the fans?

The numbers speak for themselves.

What do you think? Has our “worship of the game has blinded us to its pathologies”? What responsibilities do we have as viewers? Has your own interest in professional football changed as a result of any
of these issues?

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Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers. Is there such a thing as too much fun? Related ArticleCredit Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Learn About Leadership: Use sports to help students think about leadership with our Super Bowl lesson plan from 2001, in which students
answered questions like “Why do you think the success of a sports team has such an impact on the city it represents?” and “What is ‘morale’ and what do you think leaders can do
to ‘boost’ it?

You can update it with this post, E.L.L. Practice | The Lessons Football Can Teach , about Seattle Seahawks Coach
Pete Carroll, who runs a team “in which cursing is frowned upon, a former competitive surfer turned ‘human optimization specialist’ enlightens players in the ‘arc of the journey’
rather than the arc of the pass, and — after one of the most spectacular losses in Super Bowl history — despair is defeated by New Age-style platitudes urging players to be mindful and seek ‘high-quality
moments.’ ”

What kind of coaching do you respond to best? Why? What lessons can sports teach us about life in general?

Create Museum Exhibits: Have students reflect on the qualities that make exceptional football players, or athletes of any kind, then design museum exhibits celebrating their achievements, using our
lesson plan “The Sporting Life.”

Language Arts, Fine Arts and Media Studies

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A Budweiser ad, “Lost Dog,” shown during the 2015 Super Bowl, featured the Clydesdales long associated with the brand. Related ArticleCredit

Ask students what they think about these kinds of issue-based ads and public service announcements. What commercial would they like to see during the Super Bowl this year, given the enormous audience that message would
reach?

Play a Student Crossword: Try our Football crossword to see what you know about the game and its players.

Flex Those Descriptive Writing Muscles: “The _________ won the game against the_________.” How do sports reporters reinvent that
simple sentence in interesting ways every day?

Use sports writing as a model for descriptive writing with our lesson “Getting in the Game,” then challenge your students to write a lively paragraph (or more!) that reports on some aspect of this year’s Super Bowl.

Map Social Media: Use the 2009 Interactive Map: Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl to see a United States
map that shows the frequency of the words that were tweeted as the Steelers played the Cardinals that year. But 2009 was an eon ago in social-media years. What do you think a map of this year’s contest will
look like? Why?

Will you be watching the Super Bowl on a “second screen” this year? How do you think doing so
will affect how you react to what you see? Use a tool like Storify to collect and display some of the best reactions to the game, and information you find about the ads, the halftime
show or any other aspect of the Super Bowl.

Football and the Flu: Why does attending a Super Bowl party give you a higher risk of getting the flu? This Upshot article explains:

According to a new study published in the American Journal of Health Economics, the death rate from the flu is appreciably higher among those whose home team makes it to the Super Bowl.

This seemingly puzzling finding actually makes some sense. The game occurs during the heart of flu season and is the reason for the mingling at Super Bowl parties. And fans with their team in the game are probably
more likely to attend one.

For many ideas about teaching about the flu and how to avoid it, visit this lesson plan.

Pose and Answer Sports-Related Science Questions:Do heart attack rates rise during the Super Bowl? Have your students pose sports-related
science and health questions and then work in groups to answer them, using this Science Times “Really?” column as a model.

In Nevada, more bets are placed on the Super Bowl than any other sporting event. Last year, for example, a record of nearly $99 million was bet in Nevada’s sports books. Of that, the books kept $7,206,460.

While even the best quarterbacks fumble and the seemingly invincible teams find ways to lose, the sports books nearly always wind up ahead.

Who decides the numbers and proposition bets for big games like the Super Bowl, and how do they do it? Why do the sports books nearly always end up ahead? What is “square money” and why is it that “the
flood of square money that inundates the Super Bowl makes the game one of the easiest lines of the year for oddsmakers”? Why, in a world where algorithms rule and quants are celebrated does putting out a
number remain “an old-school endeavor”? Have students read this article to
answer these questions and consider if, when and how betting on the Super Bowl is worth it.

Determine Football “Greatness”: Use sports statistics to create graphs via this lesson, in which students explore
both the objective and subjective criteria used to determine the “greatness” of a person or team. Students then compare the statistics and argue the need for other criteria to adequately judge whether
a person or team is ‘the best’ in their profession.

Update | Jan. 29, 2014: Use Statistics to Construct Arguments: After we posted this lesson on Twitter, Caroline Doughty, a second grade teacher
in Alexandria City, Virginia, contacted us to tell us about how she’s teaching the Super Bowl:

This year, I am integrating Super Bowl statistics into my math and writing blocks. In math, we are comparing numbers (touchdowns, yardage, years of experience) and adding together scores. After analyzing the statistics,
students are creating arguments for who they think will win and providing evidence to back up their opinions. Then, students will try to persuade others. Lastly, each student will vote on who they think will
win and we will graph the results.

I try to incorporate sports into my instruction as much as I can. Especially in math, it provides real life data to work with and the kids love it.

Standards

This resource may be used to address the academic standards listed below.

Writing

1Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

2Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

6Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

8Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.

Speaking and Listening

1Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

2Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

4Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Why doesn’t the NFL pay taxes? Since 1966 it hasn’t paid one cent of tax (on its huge income of billions of dollars per annum). How can its lobbyists convince legislatures NOT to tax the NFL? Students
may be really energised and interested by this topic!

I have developed a lesson where I go through what was happening in the world during each Super Bowl. The moon landing happened in the year the Jets won the Super Bowl in Super Bowl III in 1969. Apple used Super
Bowl 18 in 1984 to initially introduce their product line in 1984. The Space Ship Challenger blew up with 7 astronauts including Christa McCauliffe (the only teacher ever in space) two days after the Bears won
Super Bowl 20 in January of 1986. Discovery blew up upon reentry in 2003 in conjunction with Super Bowl 37 when Tampa Bay beat the Oakland Raiders. When Bill Clinton was a candidate, he used 60 minutes on CBS
after Super Bowl 26 when the Redskins beat the Bills to admit that he had cause pain in his marriage with Hillary by his side in 1992. I have a lot of Super Bowl Memorabilia I also share with the class and I
cover how much ticket prices have increased since Super Bowl I in 1967 when the Packers beat the Chiefs. There were actually 30,000 empty seats for that game. And it was not officially called the Super Bowl
until Super Bowl III when the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts. Before that it was officially called the AFL/NFL World Championship Game. There is a lot you can do with the Super Bowl if you are creative
enough.

Football isnt just any game, it is a life style not just for the players, but for the coaches too. We eat sleep and play football, and our fans our just as imortant, football brings more than oohs and awhs, it brings
family friends, and the whole community together. As you see you have to have passion for the game and if you do all the risks you take are all woth it in the end. Take the perspective of a kid. We grow up playing
little leage, then middle school, the highschool. everyone on that field has one dream and one goal, to win and make it to the next level. Every football team and player has one WHY. And that why is to WIN,
one of our coaches spoke to us and said “what would be the reason or the “WHY” to playing this game if our objective was to wake up early everyday, have no summer and risk injury and sacrifice
so much just to lose? Football teaches leadership and our great coaches teach us how to grow up and be men. Football is life, and wil turn boys into men. -Angel Galvan Crosby highshcool #cctakeover thank you.

This article really caught my attention because I am a huge fan of sports and watching football. The reason this was so interesting to me was because of how they were talking about how may players get head injuries.
You never really realize when you are watching the game how serious a hit can be. Another thing that caught my eye was that they don’t know if kids should be able to play tackle football. I don’t
really agree with this because I think it is part of a sport, kind of like taking a microphone out of singing. With this one, you won’t sound as good because you will be trying to get everyone to hear
and also you wont have auto-tune to make your voice sound amazing. Overall I think it is a good article and gives you lots of details and percentages about the ” Big Game.”